March 31 to April 1

Mark will be presenting at
The British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects 2017 Annual Conference.

Paper – ‘POST ENVIRONMENTAL LANDSCAPES OF THE NORTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES.”
Resiliency through diversity and the re-imagining of “Novel Landscapes”

ABSTRACT

In highly contested landscapes concepts of the (picturesque/natural) are most challenged by our desire to inhabit and conversely conserve them. Our many teleological constructions of landscape bound, embed and locate the built form and work on it over time. Our conception of landscape is a potentially resilient thing, emerging perhaps out of displacements (our need to quantify the distance and direction as we move from place to place and in turn communicate this journey). Our desire to hold on to an aesthetic of landscape and survey our Eden is quite strong. Perhaps this desire is a wrong turn in itself if we are to adapt to a rapidly changing environment as a result of global warming.

As we protect endangered ecological communities and encourage biodiversity through restoration we need to ensure we don’t stymie opportunities to enhance the overall resiliency of “patched” landscapes. The overly managed, high input lifestyle landscapes clustered around the built form often relegate biodiversity to the bottom of the paddock while fighting the novel landscape closer to home. There needs to be a greater integration of Crown, private and public landscapes and a greater awareness of the potentialities for resilient ecosystems that are unlikely to be what is at once familiar and nostalgic. Can we reimagine “Novel Landscapes” and in so doing increase diversity and resiliency?